Today's Recorder reports:
Report Finds More Oversight Needed to Prevent State Appellate Court Delays -- The report by a chief justice-appointed committee said the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento has fixed problems that lead to chronic delays in disposing of cases. Committee members recommended statewide changes to prevent such problems from happening elsewhere.
Years-long delays in disposing of cases in the Third District Court of Appeal “were avoidable and inexcusable” but the Sacramento appellate court has taken “prompt and effective measures” to fix the problems, a Judicial Council committee concluded in a report released Monday.
The report, ordered by the chief justice and compiled by a group of appellate court justices, executives and attorneys, offers few specific details on how the cases were allowed to languish—some for nine to 10 years after full briefing. Those delays led to the forced retirement in June of the court’s administrative presiding justice, Vance Raye, after the Commission on Judicial Performance concluded the veteran jurist “failed to properly exercise his administrative and supervisory authority.”
The report made more than 20 recommendations for preventing the type of delays that occurred in the Third District. They include:
- Directing the administrative director to report to the Judicial Council’s appellate presiding justices committee a list of fully briefed appeals that have been fully briefed for more than a year.
- Adopting a new rule, or amending an existing one, that allows administrative justices “collectively,” under the oversight of the chief justice, to review and take action on complaints that an appellate court’s leadership has not addressed problems adequately.
- Improving workload statistics to reflect the type and complexity of cases being handled, judicial vacancies, and the number of pending, fully briefed cases.
- Taking steps to speed up the preparation of an appellate record at the superior court level.
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